


Final Approach

by coldhope



Category: Cars (Movies), Planes (Movies)
Genre: Dusty and the Pacific have a complicated history, Gen, repurposing historical events
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-19
Updated: 2015-12-07
Packaged: 2018-04-10 04:10:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4376735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coldhope/pseuds/coldhope
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Almost 80 years ago, the famous plane Amelia Gearhart vanished on the second-to-last leg of her historic round-the-world flight. Now, racing fellow Wings Around the Globe winners on a special run honoring Gearhart, Dusty Crophopper finds himself lost over the Pacific due to equipment failure. </p><p>Again. </p><p>Post-<i>Planes: Fire and Rescue</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

This wasn't supposed to happen. 

Dusty had been lost in the Pacific once before, and it wasn't an experience he cared to repeat. This time there were no fighter jets to guide him in for an emergency landing on a carrier. This time there was only the numb fizzle of a broken connection somewhere in his antenna housing, and the sigh and crackle of static washing through his radio. 

He'd taken off from Oakland a week and change ago, racing a handful of other past Wings Around the Globe rally winners on a special alumni voyage. _Champions Around the Globe_. "Champions" made him think of Blade, and he wondered vaguely what Dipper would make of it if he failed to arrive on schedule. _Air racing's dangerous_ , he thought. _I knew that. I know that._

The whole thing had gone smoothly with the exception of a prop blade needing replacement back in Khartoum; since one was damaged, they replaced all three. That had been done quickly and painlessly, and Dusty was pretty sure Dottie wouldn't have any criticism when she saw the repair. If she saw the repair. 

Oakland to New Orleans, New Orleans to San Juan. San Juan to Fortaleza, Fortaleza to Saint-Louis, then across Africa to Khartoum. Karachi, Bangkok, Kupang, Darwin. From Darwin to Lae, in Papua New Guinea, and from Lae to a little nothing speck of land called Howland Island, and from there to Honolulu and back to Oakland. It was a historic route, not chosen for any particular type of challenge so much as an homage to one of the greats of aviation history. Dusty thought, miserably, that it figured. Amelia Gearhart had vanished seventy-some years ago flying this exact leg of her own world tour, and now he was going to see what it was like. 

The takeoff from Lae had been unremarkable. He'd been third in line, idly sifting through frequencies and waggling his ailerons and elevators to loosen them up. The two planes ahead of him were a Brazilian champion who'd taken WATG in 2008 and Bulldog, who had been complaining the whole way about funny foreign fuel when he thought anyone was listening. Dusty had watched them climb, and as soon as the tower gave him clearance he was roaring down the runway after them, Lae falling away beneath him with that familiar weightless ease, and the second-to-last lap of the race had begun. He was still flying low, a thousand feet or so, but he looked up to see the speck of one of the others falling behind, and grinned. 

Then--with no warning--something had gone _pop-sizzle_ in his antenna housing, and his bearings swam in a horrible vertiginous twist. He sideslipped a hundred feet or so before he could get hold of himself, panting, dizzy. The short, or whatever it was, only hurt a little. The very familiar sinking sensation as he realized he didn't know where the hell he was going--and that he couldn't radio for help with his antenna busted--bothered Dusty a great deal more than the pain. 

He knew the race officials had to have him on their GPS displays: his backup transponder was separate from the main antenna array for exactly this reason, and it was still exchanging handshakes with some distant satellite. They'd be able to see exactly where he went into the drink after running out of gas. Which wouldn't be long, the way things were going. Nobody had been carrying more fuel than they needed to get from Lae to Howland--with a safety margin, of course. He should have been on final approach ten minutes ago, should have had wheels on the ground by now, but all Dusty can see in any direction is cadet-blue wrinkled sea. Calm, not like the raging storm he'd run into last time he was over this particular ocean, but that didn't make matters any better. He'd left his pontoons behind at Propwash Junction when he left to begin this race, and been a little amazed at how _much_ drag those things had been clocking. Without them he was faster and more nimble and also, he thought bitterly, completely unable to land on anything _but_ dry land. 

_So what are you going to do?_

Blade's voice, cutting through the generalized dread. Dusty blinked, realizing he was beginning to dutch-roll a little, and steadied himself.

 _I'm off course. Obviously. I don't know if I'm too far north or south_ , he thought, just as his fuel-low indicator light winked on. It was very bright, he thought. Very bright even in the sunshine. He had about ten more minutes of flying at this speed and altitude before his tank ran dry. _I'm going to ditch._

 _Got that all settled in your head, do you?_ The mental Blade-voice was so sharp Dusty could picture the expression that went with it, ice-blue eyes narrowed and unmerciful. 

_I don't see where I have much of a choice_ , he thought. 

_You ever looked at a map before? They're kind of useful if you want to know stuff about where you're going._

The fuel light seemed to be getting brighter, which wasn't actually possible, but Dusty found himself staring at it nonetheless. It was mesmerizing. 

_Wake up, champ_. With a jerk he brought his wings back level, realizing how close he'd come to beginning a graveyard spiral. Maps. Right. He'd seen lots of maps of the Pacific and they all looked like flat blue nothing, exactly like what was underneath him at the moment. Flat blue nothing with the occasional tiny splatter of brown, island chains with names he couldn't pronounce. 

Island chains. 

Howland wasn't the only island round here. 

_Ya think? Where were the others, south or north?_

South. They had been south. A scattering of tiny islands, nothing more than coral chips sticking out of the water. _I can't land on one of those!_

 _I don't see where you got much of a choice_ , Blade said in his mind, deliberately echoing his own protest. 

_I'm gonna die_ , he thought. _I'm really gonna die._

_Maybe, but you can at least make an effort, champ. C'mon._

He took his eyes off the brilliant yellow glow of the fuel indicator and dropped his right wing, banking south. The sea beneath him was unbroken, unmarred, the same blue that he'd been looking at for the past however long. It looked crinkled from up here, but Dusty knew from experience that when he hit it those crinkles would be full-sized waves, vast and merciless and way harder than water ought to be. He straightened up, seeing clouds up ahead at his altitude. _I'm gonna have to go through those,_ he thought. _Detouring around them takes gas I don't have. Figures_. The only damn clouds in the whole sky and they had to be right in his way.

 _Think about that_. This time it wasn't Blade, it was Skipper. _Think about that. What do clouds mean, Dusty?_

_I don't know, turbulence? That it's gonna get cold and wet?_

_Think_ , Skipper said again, and then he realized what he was looking at. _Clouds mean land._

It was almost invisible in the glare off the water, a small green flattened loop fringed with pale reef, a lagoon in its center. Not particularly inviting, but that reef was flat, that reef looked wide enough and long enough for him to put wheels on it, and that reef right now was the most beautiful thing Dusty had seen in his whole entire life. He dove for it, feeling his engine begin to hiccup while he was still setting up his approach-- _I gotta get this right, there's no chance for a go-around, just like landing on the Flysenhower, I can do this, I can_ do _it--_

He touched down hard, with no grace at all, and almost at once blew a tire: the coral beneath him was sharp and uneven, so bumpy it jarred his whole frame, the busted antenna aching as he jounced and bucketed along. It seemed to take forever for him to slow down, but all of a sudden it was over: his engine stuttered and died completely, and in the silence without the familiar brawling hum, the crash and hiss of surf was very, very loud. 

Seawater stung his tires--the burst one was nothing more than rags of rubber, _ow_ \--and the sun was already uncomfortably hot without the rush of wind to cool him. 

The sky was very clear and very blue and very empty except for the drift of little puffy clouds overhead. To his left the beach sloped up to a thick green jungle. To his right there was nothing but ocean as far as Dusty could see--other than some anonymous rusty wreckage just at the edge of the reef. Something long, long dead and gone. 

As the simple relief of being on dry land settled and began to wash away, Dusty was aware of a strong and illogical sense of foreboding. Stronger than the sight of the old wreckage could explain. _I'm okay,_ he told himself. _They're gonna find me, they have to find me, the transponder's still working. In a few hours somebody will show up and I'll be rescued and this will all be embarrassing as hell and everyone'll be telling stories about Crophopper the Plane who Can't Ask for Directions and_

_and somebody is watching me._

He looked around, eyes wide, dazzled by the sun off the sea. _I'm on a deserted island in the middle of nowhere and somebody is watching me._

Nothing from either Blade or Skipper: they seemed to have split the scene. 

After a moment the feeling eased off, and he thought maybe it was just leftover stress from how close he'd come to ditching. The sun really wasn't kidding around out here, though, and foreboding aside he really, really wanted to find some shade. That meant the jungle, and whatever might be waiting in that green concealment. 

With a last look around, Dusty limped up the beach, wincing as hot sand found his shredded tire. He was suddenly, abruptly tired, so tired it was hard to think. The undergrowth was so thick he couldn't see very far into the jungle, but the shade was amazingly welcome. A little further on he thought he could make out a thinner patch, a clearing or a path or something through the forest, but he didn't have time to consider it before exhaustion reared up like a wave and flooded through him, sending him down into the dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is based on the hypothesis that Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan landed on Gardner Island, now Nikumaroro, and were able to send several radio calls for help before their Electra was washed off the reef into the deep ocean. According to this theory, Noonan died soon after their landing but Earhart survived for a while on the island. Evidence found on Nikumaroro including aluminum and plexiglass consistent with the Electra, the remains of a woman's shoe similar to one Earhart had been photographed wearing, and a number of other items support the idea that a castaway had lived for some time on the island. The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) is continuing their work to try and prove this hypothesis, and you should all go read about it because it is intensely, intensely awesome.


	2. Chapter 2

When he woke, he had _no idea_ where he was. 

It was the dense unyielding darkness of a moonless night, but that was the only thing he could be sure of. His lights revealed nothing but green tangled vegetation, an irregular overgrown forest of some kind. Away to his left a rhythmic sigh and hiss sounded like radio static. It smelled strange, lush and intense and...salty. 

Salt air. The sea. 

The static wasn't static at all, it was surf breaking on a beach, and he was on an island--and he _still_ had no idea where he was. Somewhere in the South Pacific. Somewhere a long, long way from where he ought to be. 

Dusty wondered how long it had been since he landed--how long he'd been asleep, unconscious, whatever. Must be hours. Shouldn't someone have come to find him by now?

A horrible suspicion crept in. Was his backup transponder broken too? Without that they'd have no way to locate him other than to fly search patterns. Had they already done that while he sat here hidden in the shade of the jungle? Had they already decided it was too late?

He thrashed free of the vines--it couldn't be possible that they'd already begun to grow around him but it felt as if they had--and made his way out to the beach, limping on his wrecked tire. His lights seemed very, very small in the hugeness of the night, doing little more than emphasizing the vast dark world around him, and after a moment or two Dusty shut them off. 

There _was_ light, he realized, as his eyes adjusted. No moon, but the water itself seemed to be fringed with faint sparkles, as if something in it was glowing. And--

He gasped, looking up. The sky wasn't just scattered with stars, it was _full_ of them, glittering, brilliant. More stars than he had ever seen in his life. The smudged wheel-trace of the Whitewall Way arched from horizon to horizon, a line of brighter light against the sparkling background. 

_That's our galaxy_ , he thought, staring at the band of brighter stars. _I'm looking at our galaxy._

A point of steady light caught his attention as it moved, sliding across the sky. _Satellite_ , Dusty thought, and suddenly the awareness of just how small he was, how very small and insignificant, hit him like a storm-squall. He huddled down on his gear and closed his eyes, shivering hard, feeling more alone than he had known it was possible to feel. 

_They're never gonna find me._

It was the nagging pain from his landing gear that shook him out of the daze. It hurt worse than a shredded tire ought to hurt; he must've cracked something. He looked back along the visible track that he'd made rolling and bumping across the beach, and then up at the glittering vault of the sky again, and back down--and then sighed and set his jaw and started moving. 

Signing a beach was a lot more work than signing somebody's nose. His roughly-scuffed _D_ was as big as he could make it without going past the high-tide line, taking up a lot of beach real estate. If anyone _did_ fly over, maybe they'd be able to see it. He could hope. 

The physical effort had taken his mind off the awed sense of his own insignificance, and the awareness of being completely alone. Now, resting with his wheels in the surf--which _was_ sparkling, tiny little points of light tumbling and gleaming as they moved--it came back with a vengeance. _Think about something else_ , he told himself. _Think about racing stats. Anything. Anything that isn't being marooned all alone on a desert island--_

And that was when something in the jungle _moved_.

Something big, by the sound of it. 

Dusty yelped and scooted backwards, his prop twirling in alarm. What kind of things lived on desert islands? He wasn't good at wildlife in general, and all his experience was limited to Piston Peak, but whatever that was it sounded...big. Bigger than him, anyway. 

There was nowhere to go. The reef, and the open sea, were behind him; the beach stretched in either direction, with no place to hide. The thing in the jungle was coming, he could hear it rustling and creaking as it moved through the vegetation, a little to his left, where he realized there was a gap in the undergrowth. As if there was a hidden path there, where something regularly came down to the beach. 

He was frozen, shaking but unable to move, when a shape appeared through the trees. Starlight outlined the curve of a battered nose, flanked by two engine cowlings, and then broad wings, both of them missing their tips. The unmistakable loop of a Bendix direction-finding antenna looked a little like a futuristic tiara. 

A Lockheed Electra 10-E. 

_I am alone on a desert island with a dead plane_ , Dusty thought, dizzy with terror. _In a minute I'm going to wake up, I am going to wake up and this will never have happened, none of this will ever have happened--_

The Electra was all the way out of the jungle now, starlight turning her aluminum skin into beaten silver. He could see that her left landing gear was damaged too, both tires were flat, and that the wingtips hadn't been sheared off cleanly but bent and broken. 

_I am looking at a ghost._

A _solid_ ghost, Dusty amended, still so frightened he could barely breathe. She wasn't transparent, she wasn't floating. She was just...sitting there on the beach. Not moving now. 

And then she opened her eyes and stared at him, and Dusty Crophopper screamed. 

~

Later he would insist that at no point did he actually _faint_ , that was lies and slander; but he did have a moment not unlike the dizzy greying-out spells he'd had the first couple of times he'd tried to fly high. The world seemed to swoop away from him, leaving nothing but a rushing sparkly grey void. When it faded, he blinked his eyes open and found himself face to face with Amelia Gearhart.

She was _right there_. Close enough for him to see the scattering of slightly darker spots across her nose: freckles, he thought, amazed. Her eyes were pale--in this half-light it was impossible to tell if they were blue or grey--and currently narrowed in what he identified with surprise as... _concern?_

When she spoke, her voice was cracked and rusty. As if she hadn't used it in decades, Dusty thought. "Are you all right, young man?"

_A ghost is talking to me._

Would a ghost sound like that, though? Not all spooky or echoing, just sort of...old? "Uh," he said, brilliantly. "I'm fine. Are...are you dead, ma'am?"

She laughed, an unexpected and very unghostly sound. It, too, was rusty with disuse. "I don't think so," she said. "I ache too much. I've been asleep for a long time, haven't I?"

"It's...um, it's 2015."

The eyes widened. "Two thousand _fifteen_?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Oh, my," she said. "A _very_ long time. And now you've come along and woken me up. You can't be here by choice."

"I, uh. I got lost. My antenna's malfunctioning, I couldn't navigate or radio for help. I ran--"

"Out of gas," she finished. "And found this island just in time." 

Dusty nodded. She rolled back a little, looking him over, and frowned. "And you're hurt. The coral is a lot sharper than it looks."

"It seriously is. I have a backup transponder that's supposed to be communicating with a satellite network, but...I think maybe it's busted too. Because nobody's...uh...shown up to rescue me yet."

"Satellite network?" she asked. 

Oh. Right. They hadn't had that back in 1937. "Um. Satellites are these things in orbit round the planet that you can bounce a signal off. You can...you can see them, sometimes. They look like moving stars."

"In orbit round the planet," she repeated, softly, amazed. 

"Yeah. There's a bunch of them. We use them for GPS--that's global positioning system--for navigation, but...without a functioning antenna nobody knows where I am."

"You're not a long-haul flyer," she said, eyes narrowed. "What are you doing over the Pacific?"

"Racing."

She raised an eyebrow in a way that made him think of Blade. "You're not built for racing."

"I know," he said, suddenly very tired. Everything hurt. He was terribly thirsty. "I did it anyway. All the way round the world."

Dusty had the satisfaction of watching her eyes widen in surprise...and then grudging respect. "How?" she asked. 

"It's a long story."

"I've got time," Amelia said drily. "I've got all the time in the world."

"What about you? I mean...you disappeared. Seventy-eight years ago. Nobody ever found a sign of you."

"There's not much to tell." She sounded tired, too, and bitter. " _Itasca_ and I couldn't communicate with each other. I got off course, ran out of fuel, just like you."

"Itasca?"

"The Coast Guard cutter who was supposed to be my support on the leg from Lae to Howland. My radio wasn't working right, or we were transmitting on the wrong schedule, or I wasn't using it right--I've thought about it, a lot, since then--and we couldn't communicate. After I landed here I used up the last of my fuel running my starboard engine to operate the radio, sending out distress calls, but nobody answered."

He could hear the aching loneliness in her voice. "How...how did you..."

"Survive?" she finished for him. "I don't know. Mostly I think I've been sleeping. There are rain-squalls which come over every now and then, and coconuts and other fruit in the jungle. It's surprising what you can make yourself do when you have no other choice."

"I know," said Dusty, who did.

"What's your name, young man?" she asked. 

"Dusty. Dusty Crophopper."

The eyebrow quirked again, and then she smiled. "Tell me about how you flew round the world, Dusty Crophopper. This I've got to hear."

In the end he followed her away from the beach, back along the path she had forced through the jungle over the years--at the expense of her wingtips--and into a sort of clearing. Soft drifts of palm-fronds lay here and there, and she pushed one of them toward him. "Rest your wheel on that."

He obeyed; it still hurt, but the softness of the palm-fronds was much nicer than the hard coral and leaf-litter of the ground. Pretty sure the wheel itself was cracked, and possibly the shock as well. _Too bad_ , Dusty thought, _the guys with the wrenches are thousands of miles away. Might as well be on the moon._ Out loud he said "I'd always wanted to be a racer. I'm...I was...a cropduster, like you might have guessed."

"It crossed my mind," said Amelia. Her voice sounded scratchy; he thought probably she hadn't had to use it this much in...a very long time. 

"So there's this race called the Wings Around the Globe Rally, it's like...the best of the best from all these different countries competing against one another. You have to be really good even to qualify to be _in_ the race at all. And I...I tried out. Everyone laughed, you know, hey, look at the farm boy, what's he doing here, like that."

She nodded. "They laughed at me, too."

"What?"

"Mm. It was a little...ambitious...for a woman to try flying all the way round the world on her own. A lot of people were sure I wouldn't be able to do it." Amelia closed her eyes for a moment. "One of the worst things about this was knowing that they'd been proved right."

"Hey," Dusty said. "Hey, no, they weren't right, you're a legend. You're a hero."

"Some hero. Never mind that, go on. They laughed at you."

He was a little distracted by the thought that anyone had mocked the great Amelia Gearhart for ambition. "Um. Yeah. Yeah, right, so anyway I did okay--for a cropduster--but didn't make it into the race until one of the other guys got DQ'd for nitro. Then I...had to train. Real hard. _Real_ hard. I was lucky I had such a great coach and mechanic..."

Dusty told her about Skip's training program, and about his fear of heights, which got him another eyebrow quirk, but no comment. About the start of the race--meeting Ripslinger, El Chu, Ishani, Rochelle, Bulldog, the others. About flying to Iceland under a thousand-foot ceiling. She made him repeat that part, especially the bit about the iceberg he'd nearly cratered right into, and then told him to go on. 

Telling the story made it almost come alive again for him. The vivid urgency of his flight guiding Bulldog; the serene dreaming beauty of the Taj Mahal and Ishani beside him; the instant of white-hot terror coming out of the tunnel and the peace of the high reaches of Nepal on the other side. Telling El Chu: _low and slow_ , and watching with a smile as Rochelle reappeared at the balcony. Then losing his antenna to Ned and Zed and being rescued by the Jolly Wrenches.

"You know, I seriously can't believe it's possible for this to happen twice," he said, shifting uncomfortably; his blown antenna ached. "I mean once, sure. Once is just bad luck, or more accurately sabotage. Twice is just not fair."

"I'd say it's evidence that something's looking out for you, Dusty," she said. He blinked. 

"How'd you figure that?"

"Well, think about it. This is a big ocean. Very...big. And the odds of you getting lost in it are pretty high. The odds of you being lost in it _and then finding somewhere to land_ , twice, well. That starts to look like something's on your side."

"...Huh," he said. 

"You did the right thing when you realized you were off course," she said. "But I think there's still a lot of luck involved."

"Maybe. Seems to have quit on me now."

"Don't lose hope," she said. "They know where you were supposed to be, they know your range on what you were carrying, which means they know where it's possible for you to be. They'll come looking."

"Like they did for you?" he said, and wished immediately he hadn't. "I'm...I'm sorry, Amelia."

"It's all right," she said, more tired than anything. "In my day the Navy didn't have the kind of technology you were talking about. Their planes had a much more limited range, and nobody was using satellites to talk to one another. It would have been...difficult. I don't blame them for giving up."

"I still don't get why the radio didn't work," he said. "Were you...I dunno, tuned to the wrong frequency or something?" How did that happen? Radio frequencies were clear and easy to scan through with zero effort whatsoever. 

"I've thought a lot about it." Amelia's voice was scratchier than ever. "I don't know what went wrong. I think it was a combination of things--my fault and theirs. It doesn't matter now."

"Yeah it does," Dusty said, frowning. "Of course it does. When we..."

He trailed off, and again the awareness of just how big the world around them was, and by comparison how small they were, settled heavily on him. He'd been going to say _when we get rescued_. 

"Don't worry about it now," Amelia told him. "Get some rest while you can. The sun will be up soon, and it'll get hot quickly."

He sighed, aching all over, his wheel throbbing unpleasantly. "I guess you're right."

"Thank you, Dusty."

"Huh?"

"For telling me your story. Thank you."

He felt his face go hot, and was glad it was dark. "Mmh. You're welcome."

She said nothing, and after a few moments he felt himself begin to drift, and didn't fight it. 

The next thing he knew, the clearing was filled with a brilliant actinic blue-white light and blasted with wind, the thudding _whopwhopwhop_ of a big helo's rotors shaking every strut in his body and jarring bolts of pain from his injured wheel. Dimly, over the engine noise and the beat of the rotors, he could hear shouted commands. _I'm dreaming_ , he thought, dizzy, trying to see through the glare. _I'm dreaming and this isn't real_.

Then there were people, pitties rappelling down into the clearing, and he could see Amelia across the open space squinting painfully against the light. More shouting. More shouting, and her name. And his. "Crophopper! Crophopper, can you hear me?--Medic, I need a medic over here--"

"Who are you?" Dusty asked, his mouth almost too dry to speak. Someone was doing painful things to his wheel, and then someone else gave him a drink, and nothing had ever tasted so good in his entire life. When they took the straw away he tried to lurch forward to reclaim it, and couldn't move. He only just managed not to whimper. 

"We're the good guys. Slow down, kid, don't gulp it or you'll be sick." 

He tried to focus. "Amelia--"

"We're takin' care of her, don't worry. Man, you just can't stop makin' history, can you, Crophopper?"

Dusty blinked, finally getting his vision to clear. Pitties in uniform. Familiar uniform. One of them held the can for him to drink. "Take it easy now," he was saying. "You're in moderately poor shape. Not enough to be the first cropduster to fly round the world, now you gotta be the guy who found Amelia Gearhart _as well_? Not sure how you're gonna top that one."

"It was an accident," Dusty said, wincing at how dumb that sounded. 

"Tell it to the news guys, kid. Hold on, we're gonna get you out of here." They were busy fastening a sling around him, and Dusty's tank sloshed queasily as he was lifted from the ground--it always felt weird to be flying without actually doing the flying. He looked down at the clearing, and the last thing he saw before he closed his eyes tight was the team of medics surrounding the old Electra, nearly eighty years missing and finally found.


	3. Chapter 3

The rest of that flight in the darkness wasn't something he particularly wanted to remember. Bits and pieces of it were clearer than others; there had been chatter back and forth over radios, words he couldn't make out as he hung in the chopper's sling and tried to think of something other than how gross he felt, and then bright blinding lights had surrounded him again and he was being lowered to a flat surface painted like a runway that seemed to tilt and roll dizzily under his tires. _Runways shouldn't move_ , he thought, and then _where am I,_ and then there had been people clustered around him and a sense of being enclosed. 

After that things had gone very fuzzy indeed. He could sort of remember pain, people doing things to his right gear that hurt a hell of a lot, but oddly enough he didn't seem to care very much; it was as if the pain was happening to somebody else. Familiar voices, too, but he couldn't make out anything that was said. 

When the fuzziness finally lifted, he blinked and looked around, trying to make sense of his surroundings. Everything was painted a weirdly familiar shade of grey. 

"Hey, he's back with us, fellas," someone said, and there was a bit of cheering--and he was suddenly surrounded by pitties. Navy carrier pitties. The colors were memorable, although he'd never really gotten a good idea of what green versus yellow versus purple or red or blue or white actually meant.

"How you feelin'?" said one of them in green, rolling up an access ramp to peer at Dusty. "You've been in and out for a while, that right gear of yours was a mess. Had to weld a bunch of cracks in the wheel and strut and purge all your hydro lines, you're gonna want to have that whole assembly replaced when we get back to shore but it should hold for now. Temp's finally back down and you're lookin' pretty good. Although me and the guys would love to know how come you're wearin' T-33 wings in the first place."

Dusty waggled his ailerons, wincing a bit. "That's kind of a long story." They’d put his tip tanks back on when they removed his pontoons, rendering the wings once more instantly recognizable as Shooting Star equipment. He’d been a little surprised at how self-conscious it made him feel at first, how he’d had to remind himself _I’ve earned these_. 

"Yeah, we figured. We got a little while before we make port, though." A rough, but not unkind, tine patted his wing. "But hey, up to you, man. Pretty sure the guys wanna say hi, if you're feelin' up to braving the deck."

"The guys?" Dusty repeated, twisting his right gear, testing the pain. Okay, yeah, it hurt, but he could live with it. You could live with quite a lot of pain, he had discovered, if you knew how to compartmentalize.

"Well, Lieutenants Bravo and Echo have been down here checkin' in whenever they ain't busy. You had us worried for a while there, Crophopper. And the rest of the squad hasn't forgotten you. Victory, right?"

Dusty blinked at him, and then had to smile a bit. "Wait, I'm on the _Flysenhower?_ Again?"

"Gotta quit meeting like this," said the pitty, grinning, "or people are gonna talk. Yeah, it's us. When you didn't show up on schedule at Howland, your crew got scared, and when your crew chief is Skip Riley that kinda means nobody's gettin' any rest till someone finds some answers. Skip called the Coast Guard cutters who were supposed to be providin' sea support, but I guess they didn't jump to it fast enough cause his next call was right here."

Dusty stared. "He called you guys and got you to...what, quit what you were doing and come down here to start looking for me? A _supercarrier?_ "

"Wrap that up in a lot of officer-speak and you got a bingo, kid. We weren't far away, though, and we've been on a pretty slow exercise to begin with, and I guess it didn’t take that long goin’ up the ladder before we got orders. You weren't exactly hauling us away from a crucial war game, our guys were kinda glad of the excuse to do somethin’ else, to be honest.” He shrugged. “Didn’t take us long to find you, either. Couple flights went circling round all the little nothing splats of island in these parts, someone saw a D on a beach, went in for a closer look, there you were. Took us less'n an hour once you were spotted to get wheels on the ground and retrieve you and Miss Gearhart."

Dusty sat up on his gear. "Is she okay?"

"Man, that lady is tougher'n all the COs I ever served under rolled up into one,” said the pitty, shaking his head in wonder. “She's gonna be fine, after some work and some intel gettin' her up to speed."

"But...all those years in the sea air...there's gotta be corrosion...?"

"Less'n you would think. Hell, one of her engines even started up when we got some fuel into her. It...it ain't great, kid, she's not gonna fly for a good while yet, but...she'll be okay."

"You mean it?"

"Crophopper, you suck at listening to people. Yes, I mean it. Now you better talk to your crew before they charter some poor civilian to fly ‘em out here and see your aft in person. Not just your hometown crew, some guys from some national park been askin' after you, as well as every damn news outlet on the face of the planet."

"National park? The guys from Piston Peak?" Oh man, he did not think he was strong enough to handle Dipper right now. Definitely not the jumpers. All he really wanted to do was drift back off to sleep. 

"That's it. Catchy." The pitty gave him a considering look. "Still pretty beat, huh? Here, we'll ping your home base, say you're gonna be fine, even woke up a little bit, but right now what you need more'n anything is rest."

He didn't have the presence of mind to protest, and when they rolled the radio mike up to him he was able to use his repaired right gear despite the pain, pressing on the PTT pedal. "H-hey, guys," he said. 

"Dusty! Are you okay?" It was Dottie, but behind her he could hear Chug and Sparky’s exclamations and the deeper growl of Skipper telling them to can it. 

"I'm fine," he said, still a bit dizzy. "Or I will be, anyhow. I'm back on the boat, Skip. The Wrenches rescued me again. Can you believe it? Lost in the Pacific twice, same guys rescued me both times. That's gotta be, like, some kinda record."

"I bet the boys on board are proud to have you, kid," Skipper said. "You’re an honorary Jolly Wrench, remember. Heard you had a busted gear, that all straightened out?"

"Yeah, they fixed me," he said. "They say I'm gonna need to have it replaced but it's okay for now. You, uh. You guys know what happened?"

"You found _Amelia Gearhart!_ " Chug exploded. "You found her! You found her on a desert island! It's all over the news! You're a hero, Dust! _Again!_ "

"Way to go, Dustarino!" Sparky said. "The race officials are going wingnuts over this, the whole race was sorta kinda dedicated to her and now she's actually shown up, they don't know _what_ to do!"

"It was an accident," he said, closing his eyes. "I was just lucky I found the island in time to land, it's a million to one chance that it happened to be _her_ island. They say she's doing okay, though. She's really nice, guys. She took care of me."

“They can’t wait to talk to her! The President wants to meet her, there’s gonna be parades and celebrations and all kinds of stuff!” Chug sounded as if he were practically levitating with excitement, he thought, and it made Dusty himself feel _heavier_ , as if he was pulling extra Gs just sitting perfectly still with his eyes shut. 

“That’s great,” he said, wondering how he’d ever had the energy to dust crops, let alone win air races: he couldn’t remember ever feeling quite so exhausted. Someone nudged him gently and he let himself roll backward, taking his wheel off the PTT switch. 

“That’s gonna have to be it for now,” said someone. The pitty he’d been talking to. “He needs to rest. We’ll give you guys a call in a little while with an update.”

“Understood,” said Skipper, a long way away. “Well done, Dusty. I think Ranger would agree.”

Dusty thought of Blade, in the hell of Augerin Canyon, scorched and dented, terribly hurt, hanging on because there was exactly no other option _but_ to hang on, and how his voice had cut through the crackling roar of the fire itself like cold clear water. How that voice had gone right through his mind, through the confusion of furious determination and fear and urgency, and slaked it all with a single phrase, like a perfectly aimed drop: _good move, partner_. How he’d taken that down with him into the dark, with an echoing thought of _worth it_. 

He was vaguely aware that people were still talking, but none of it made sense, and he didn’t struggle when sleep rose back up to claim him once again. 

~

He didn’t get a chance to talk with Amelia--or even to see her for more than a few moments--until the _Flysenhower_ reached Honolulu three days later. She had been undergoing repairs and debriefing from some of the senior officers, and Dusty hadn’t been in any condition to try wheedling his way past them to chat with her; his temperature had drifted upwards sufficiently to prompt another system flush, and he’d spent most of the time in an uncomfortable doze. 

As they approached Pearl Harbor, though, Dusty found himself taking the elevator up to the deck to join her, preparing for her first public appearance in seven decades. The sun was too bright, hurting his eyes after the pleasant dimness of the _Flysenhower_ ’s repair bays, and under its light the old Electra _blazed_ all over. Dents and scratches in her aluminum skin had been buffed out, polished to a blinding mirrorlike shine. Her wingtips had been temporarily repaired; he knew from listening to the pitties’ conversation that she would need a full professional restoration, but the temporary cosmetic fix was good enough for the news cameras. 

Half-blinded and suffering from an uncharacteristic sort of shyness, he approached her, not sure what to say. The crew was still swarming busily around the deck, too busy with their duties to pay much attention to him while she was there. 

Dusty cleared his throat. “Um. Amelia?”

Her props twirled a little as she turned to look at him. “Dusty! There you are, I was starting to get worried.”

“You, uh. You look great,” he said. “Amazing, actually.”

She smiled, the crooked wry smile he remembered from the island. “I feel a bit...garish. I think they overdid it with the polishing.”

“No, it. It looks great. You look great.” _You just said that, idiot_ , he told himself. “I mean, everyone’s gonna be dazzled. In a good way.” He was still wearing his trademark orange-white-blue race paintjob, but the repaired right gear and strut was a mess of bare metal, missing the fairing that would have covered it once retracted into his wing. Dusty had honestly forgotten what it looked like--until she glanced down, and her expression changed. 

“Are you all right? I asked after you, but everyone said you were being repaired.”

“I’m fine,” he said. It was automatic. 

She rolled a little closer, eyeing him critically. “You don’t look fine.”

“It’s nothing. Just need a replacement, shouldn’t take long to fix. Nobody’s gonna notice my messed-up wheel, they’ll all be focused on you, anyway, like they should be.”

“That’s not what I mean,” she said. “And of course they’ll be looking at you, Dusty, you’re a champion in your own right, _and_ you’re the one who found me. Your people--your friends--they’ll be here, won’t they?”

“Yeah,” Dusty said, although he wasn’t entirely sure what to expect when they reached the harbor. He probably should have...made some calls, he thought, belatedly. The idea of making the flight back to California appealed not in the slightest, and he wasn’t a hundred percent sure he’d actually be able to make it on his own. _Oh well,_ he thought. _I’ll figure something out._ Aloud he said “Yeah, they’ll...be here. I’m sure of it.”

“Good.” Amelia was still eyeing him. “I look forward to meeting them. You get that mechanic of yours to look at you as soon as possible, you understand?”

“Yes ma’am,” he said, and dipped a wing in a sketched salute; that got a little smile out of her, and the concerned narrow-eyed look faded. “Um. I know you’re gonna be crazy busy for the foreseeable future, all these official visits and homecomings and stuff, but...if you ever wanted to drop in on Propwash Junction, I know the whole town would be thrilled.”

Her smile widened. Under the polished shine he could still see the little freckles on her nose. “I’d love to,” she said. 

“Awesome,” Dusty said, and meant it. He would have said more, but just then the _Flysenhower_ ’s vast horn boomed out across the water, echoing off the approaching mountainsides. When he could think again he was in the midst of a group of Navy deck crew rapping out instructions and directions, and the opportunity for quiet conversation was irrevocably lost. 

For him the rest of that afternoon was a dizzy, burning-hot haze of flashbulbs and shouted questions and microphones jabbed into his face. “Dusty, Dusty, are you disappointed at not finishing the race?” “What was going through your mind when you realized you were lost?” “Dusty, will you return to racing?” “How did you know where to find Amelia Gearhart?” “Dusty, what went wrong?”

He did his best to stay cool in the midst of the chaos, answering reporter after reporter with what he hoped were useful and not completely stupid sound bites, but he was desperately glad when familiar voices broke into the confusion. Skipper was there, thank the Maker, _Skipper was there_ , and a moment later the old Corsair’s familiar navy paint was visible, his wings folded up to make it easier to negotiate the crowd, and then Skipper was between him and the reporters, guiding him away. “That’s enough,” Skip was saying. “Give us a little room, fellas. Little room, please. Thank you. No comment.” 

Dusty leaned against Skipper and let himself be led away, grateful for the reprieve--and more grateful still when they reached the shade of an awning and cool tines gently touched his face, his wing, his aching right gear. “ _What_ have you been doing to yourself, Dusty Crophopper?” Dottie demanded, looking up at him with a ferocious scowl. “You’re burning up.”

“Dottie,” he said, sincerely, “I am so glad to see you right now, you have _no idea_.”

~

Later, watching it on TV, Dusty would be a little surprised to see how normal he had actually looked, making his way through the cluster of reporters: a little flushed, a little dazed, sure, but reasonably with-it nonetheless. He had been right, though: for once he wasn’t the prime attraction. The majority of the media’s attention was focused squarely on Amelia. Under the brilliant Hawaiian sunshine her polished metal glittered and gleamed like jewels, like sequins--like the stars he had seen looking up from the island's beach, in what felt so distant and improbable a memory that it might as well have been a dream. Watching the crowd part for her, he was aware of a powerful sense of closure, of some brief and fantastical chapter in his life coming to a distinct end. 

On the island, when they’d just been found, one of their rescuers had said it: _Not enough to be the first cropduster to fly round the world, now you gotta be the guy who found Amelia Gearhart_ as well? _Not sure how you're gonna top that one._

Dusty had to admit, as the days passed and the headlines repeated one another, that he didn’t know.


	4. Chapter 4

He spent a lot of time watching television, over the next week. The trip back from Honolulu on board an A380 had been spent telling Dottie and Skipper about the whole mess, how his antenna had failed and he’d only just managed to find the island in time to land before he ditched. Dusty had kept the whole _I imagined you talking to me in my head_ part to himself, judging that nobody actually needed to know about that. Dottie had asked a lot of questions about Amelia which he hadn’t been able to answer. “You probably know more about her than I do right now,” he had admitted. “I’ve been kinda out of it.”

“No wonder,” Dottie had begun, and between them he and Skip had mostly been able to convince her to save the Mechanic’s Lecture for when Dusty was in better shape to receive it. He really hadn’t been feeling well, and could barely remember the landing back at Propwash or the group of reporters hastily assembled to meet them there. 

In fact most of that day and the next was limited to a series of vague still-frames in his memory: the blessedly familiar green of cornfields, a blue sky full of puffy little clouds, then bright fluorescent lights in the dark that came and went. He had been terribly hot, his engine was obviously overheating, or was there a fire? Was he on fire, or _in_ a fire, and where was Blade on the radio telling him where to go and what to do? Someone had been talking to him, but it wasn’t Blade or Windlifter and he had no bearings and _I’m on the wall, I’m going to get my picture on the wall_ but then the burning heat shrank and dwindled into the breathtaking coldness of the North Atlantic and Dusty had been shivering so hard he thought he would fly to pieces, the chill seeming to radiate from inside his own body, as if each strut and spar had a tiny core of ice. 

He had no idea how long it was before the dizzying waves of heat and cold faded into a vague, comfortable warmth that brought with it familiar sounds and smells. The whirr and snap of tools, the buzzing crackle of an arc welder and the softer roar of a torch; hot metal, hydraulic fluid, the high thin reek of degreaser. Voices. Familiar voices. 

“--run a final test, but I think we’re clear now, and I can finish installing the gear. That won’t take long.”

“What should I tell the TV guys?” That was Sparky, a little further away. Dusty could picture Dottie’s eyeroll. 

“Tell them to go away and bother someone else,” she said, doing something under his wing that stung a little. “His condition is satisfactory and repairs are proceeding, and no, I’m not gonna talk to them myself, I don’t do press conferences.”

Dusty opened an eye slightly, squinting against the bright glare of banks of fluorescents all around him. He was resting in some kind of support that took the weight off his gear. Surgical dropcloths covered the shop floor, and something was draped over him as well, something covering his wings and tail. “...Dottie?” he asked, a little surprised at how weak he sounded. 

“Well, _finally_ ,” she said, letting go of whatever she was doing and rolling forward into his field of view. “Back with us, Dusty?”

He opened the other eye, looking around. Dottie’s shop had a certain...untidy look to it. As if nobody had been straightening up the place for several days. “How...long have I been out?”

“Three days! Dusty, you’re awake!” Sparky was excited enough for all three of them. “He’s awake! Guys, he’s awake! Guys!”

There went Dottie’s eyeroll. “Great. In about five minutes I’m gonna have to fight off a squadron of reporters. To answer the questions you’re about to ask, you’re gonna be fine, you are _not_ allowed to move and you are gonna have to stay put for at least another couple of days while you recover, I had to replace your entire gear hydraulic system and you’re still short most of a right gear while I make sure the new system’s clean and secure.”

“Three days,” Dusty repeated, most of her information having bounced right off his still-vague attention span. “Where’s...what’s happening with Amelia?”

“Getting ready for a world tour, again,” Dottie said. “This time with an escort. The whole world’s excited, nobody’s been this popular and famous since the space program. She’s been all over the news.”

“She’s being fixed?”

“The most advanced specialists in the country flew out to Hawaii to treat her,” Dottie said. “They’re not giving any details, but she’s scheduled to start her grand tour tomorrow, so I’m guessing she’s in pretty good shape right now. Better than you’ve been.” Her expression softened. “How are you feeling, anyway?”

“Tired,” Dusty said. “What...uh, what happened to me?”

“You picked up a nasty infection.” Dottie rested the back of a tine against his cheek, checking his temperature, and nodded to herself. “Much better. --They thought they’d knocked it out, but nothing involving Dusty Crophopper is ever gonna be that simple; turned out there was still some contamination lurking in your valves and reservoirs and I had to pull and replace the whole system. You’ll be fine in a few days.”

He didn’t like the sound of _lurking contamination_ , and apparently this showed in his face, because Dottie gave him a comforting pat. “I mean it, you’re gonna be just fine. Are you warm enough?”

“It’s a little chilly,” he admitted. She went away and came back with another sheet, draping it atop the blanket that was already covering his wings. It felt weird but strangely comforting, and with the added warmth he was aware of sleep pulling at him again.

Dottie smiled, and he thought vaguely that she, too, looked pretty exhausted, and wondered if she’d really been working on him nonstop for three whole days. “Drink this and get some more rest,” she told him, pushing over a can of light oil, and he tried a few sips and was a little surprised to find how nice it tasted before drifting back into a doze. 

~

The next time he woke, Dottie was gone and sunlight was flooding through the windows in the shop doors. He yawned, stretching enormously, and belatedly realized that a) moving didn’t hurt and b) his right gear was back where it belonged, even though he was still suspended in place without it touching the floor. 

“Good morning,” somebody said, while he wriggled his tire and stretched the gear out to touch the floor, trying to test the lack of pain. Dusty looked up and found his coach comfortably settled in the corner with a cup of coffee and the newspaper. Skipper smiled at him. “How’re you feelin’?”

Dusty still couldn’t quite believe that nothing hurt, twisting around to try getting a closer look at his wheel. “Um. Good,” he said. “Better. Where’s Dottie?”

“Sleeping. She’s earned it,” Skipper said, with a soft impressed whistle. “She did a hell of a job. I only got her to go sack out by promising I’d watch you myself and prevent you doing precisely what you’re doing right now, so quit it.”

“Huh?”

“Stay still and don’t put any strain on that thing,” Skipper told him. “You’re not allowed to have weight on it yet. Warm enough?”

“Yeah, I’m fine, I feel good, Skip. C’mon, I wanna get some fresh air, move about, I’ve been sitting here for like...how long now?”

Skipper scowled at him, the same thunderous expression of disapproval that had nearly sent him running the first time they had come face to face. Dusty had since learned that the scowl wasn’t actually a precursor to gross bodily harm, but it still hefted some pretty significant weight. He stopped wriggling and drooped against the lift. 

“That’s better,” Skipper said. “We thought you’d probably get bored pretty quick, so I had Sparky roll the TV in here. You’re all over the news. Well...not so much you now, actually. It’s mostly her.”

He slid the remote over to Dusty, who could reach it with his left wheel. “Dottie said she was gonna go on a world tour.”

“She is,” said Skipper. “Started in Oakland this morning. The President was there, and a bunch of celebrities. You were invited, of course.”

“I missed it?”

“You aren’t in any shape to move, let alone attend gala ceremonies, kid,” Skipper said drily. “Your pal Ripslinger was supposedly tryin’ to get hold of an invite, but strangely enough his name didn’t seem to end up on the list. Anyway, they stopped in Burbank and Tucson and tonight it’s New Orleans. Just the same route all over again, only this time nobody’s gonna disappear.”

“Man,” Dusty said with feeling. “I wish I was there. I should _be_ there with her right now.”

“Nobody has any better right than you,” Skipper agreed. “But you’re grounded for another couple days, according to Dottie. I’m sure they’ll be happy to let you join the flight when you’re cleared, it’s not like they’re in any hurry. This time it’s not a race, it’s a tour.”

Dusty thought of all the places he’d seen during the rally, all the landscape he’d flown over (and through) without paying a lot of attention to it other than as an obstacle course. It would be...nice, he thought, to experience the world as something other than a race backdrop. “I wish I was there,” he said again, and sighed, flipping on the TV. He didn’t have to spend any time searching for coverage of the Gearhart flight: it was on every single news channel. The stations played their footage of this morning’s ceremony and the subsequent takeoff in a loop; after fifteen minutes Dusty had watched it five times, intercut with footage of the arrivals and departures from Burbank and Tucson. Everywhere the cameras looked there had been massive crowds, bigger--he thought--than the WATG rally had drawn. _That’s how it should be_ , he reminded himself. _The race is a thing that happens every year, this is a once-in-a-lifetime deal_. 

He wanted to be there. He wanted it more with each repetition of the footage: Amelia, brilliant and gleaming as any film star on the red carpet, at a podium with the President, accepting a medal as a formation of Super Hornets streaked overhead; Amelia, flanked with Secret Service escorts, rising smoothly into the sky in a flawless arc as below her seas of cameras flashed and jostled; Amelia, flaring gently to touch down on the centerline amid more flashes and wild applause. Over and over they played the film of her slightly awkward greeting to the crowd, smiling that little crooked wry smile Dusty remembered so well. In the eye of the camera, the loop of her direction-finding antenna looked even more like a diadem than it had in the brilliant starlight on the island’s beach.

Dusty didn’t notice when Sparky came in, or when he and Skipper quietly left together. A little while later there was a commotion outside the shop hangar, and he barely paid attention, still focused on the TV with sleep-heavy eyes. When Skipper and Dottie had finally gotten rid of the clot of reporters outside--someone had tipped them off that Dusty Crophopper was potentially available for comment--he had already dozed off again, and didn’t see the quick but worried look coach and mechanic shot at one another, gazing at him from the doorway.


	5. Chapter 5

“--And for those of you just tuning in, here’s our coverage of today’s events and the celebrations in Oakland and Burbank, California, and Tucson, Arizona, two earlier stops on Amelia Gearhart’s historic flight retracing the route of her original journey around the world, before her landing here tonight in New Orleans where she and her companions will experience our city’s most luxurious hospitality for the next two days. Look at the crowds there, this truly is an unprecedented moment in our history--”

Click. 

“--received the Presidential Medal of Honor for her contributions to history before setting off on a triumphant world tour, visiting each city on her original flight plan. The ceremony was attended by a positive constellation of stars including--”

Click. 

“--security on this historic flight is provided by the United States Secret Service at the order of the President. We’ve been informed that at least a hundred celebrities submitted official requests to join Ms. Gearhart on various legs of her flight but to their disappointment she has insisted on going solo--that is, of course, apart from her security detail! The question on everyone’s minds is, of course, where is world champion racer Dusty Crophopper, who actually found Ms. Gearhart on the desert island where she has been stranded all these years. Crophopper has not made a public appearance since the landing at Honolulu, and rumors are rife regarding--”

Click. 

“--mysterious radio silence from Wings Around the Globe winner and air-racing underdog legend Dusty Crophopper, who is rumored to have been injured during the rescue--which, as we all know, took place during the final leg of the Champions Around the Globe rally, the results of which have still not been determined! Yes, there’s a lot of questions in the air tonight, but we go live to downtown New Orleans where a no-expense-spared celebration is in progress. Nobody knows how to party like the home of Mardi Gras--”

Click. 

“--almost exactly identical to the path Ms. Gearhart took on her 1937 circumnavigation attempt, with a few small changes to reflect some of the significant historical milestones of the intervening years. The journey is scheduled to take several weeks, as Ms. Gearhart is not intending to break any records so much as visit and enjoy the locales along the way--”

Click. 

“--Crophopper, whose apparent equipment failure on the last leg of the Champions Around the Globe race is responsible for his discovery of Amelia Gearhart’s whereabouts, has not been seen since a brief appearance at Honolulu, and the tabloids spared no time in speculation--”

Click. 

“--romantically linked with fellow Wings Around the Globe competitor, the Pan-Asian champion and Mumbai Cup winner Ishani, although sources have suggested a more homegrown romance might be in the wings--”

_Click_. Clatter. 

“You know I’m not gonna go get it this time. I told you, you throw the remote again, you aren’t getting it back, Mr. I Just Lost My TV Privileges For The Third Time.”

“Dottie, seriously, how long are you gonna keep me cooped up in here? I’m _fine_ , I’m all fixed, you did a great job. As usual. I wanna be out there, it’s not like I’ll have to do anything hard, it’s just...it’s a _tour_ , not a race.”

“I’m gonna just start holding up signs instead of repeating myself,” she said. “Like I told you, I’m waiting on a final part. As soon as that gets here and I install it, you’ll be good to go, although I want you to take it easy and not try any crazy stunts for a little while. Complaining to me won’t make that part get here any faster.”

“Can’t you just use something else? Or build one?”

“Not to these specs. It’s only going to be a few more days, Dusty. The world will keep turning, I promise.”

“What about Maru? Can Maru make it? He made my gearbox.”

Dottie stopped tinkering with whatever she was tinkering with, and for a moment Dusty thought he’d actually seriously ticked her off with the suggestion; then she turned around to face him, taking off her safety goggles, and he saw she was smiling. “Okay, you got me, Crophopper,” she said. “I should have thought of that myself. I don’t know if he’s available, don’t know if he can spare the time to come down here and do a bit of fabrication, but I guess it can’t hurt to ask. I’ll give him a call.”

“You are the _best_ , Dottie,” he said. 

“Yeah, I know. Here, if you promise not to fling it across the room again and knock the batteries out, I guess you can have the remote back. If you promise.”

“Promise. I’ll be very careful.”

“Don’t watch the news,” she said, rolling over to him with the somewhat-scuffed remote control. “They’re just repeating what you’ve already seen, and it won’t do any good to get all worked up about not being there.”

Dusty turned the TV back on, flipping through the channels. “Fine,” he said. “There’s gotta be a movie on, or something--oh man, wait. I can’t believe this.”

He turned the volume up, and the look on Dottie’s face was absolutely priceless as the _CHoPs_ theme music filled the shop. “Check it out,” he said, pointing. “I got yelled at, personally, by that guy. A whole bunch of times.”

Dottie watched the first half of “Supercopter” with him before it got to be too much and she retired to her office to try and get hold of Maru. 

Dusty was one hundred percent in agreement with Cabbie and Windlifter on the subjective merit of _CHoPs_ , but the show’s very terribleness was what made it such a great distraction. On some level, though, he found himself thinking about legends, about people to look up to, and what made them worth it: about the persistence of memory, and the reasons why someone might take up a challenge, to prove something to themselves or to the world. 

And the lengths to which someone might go, in order to win. 

~

It was the off-season, and although Maru would probably never have the leisure to achieve true boredom, what with the endless things around the base that needed fixing, the speed with which he accepted Dottie’s invitation suggested that he really wanted something else to do. He arrived promptly the next day, and spent an hour in close consultation with Dottie before taking over the shop; by the afternoon, the two mechanics between them finished working over Dusty and declared him--at long last--airworthy again. 

Of course, because Maru was Maru, not only was the special part to finish Dusty’s right gear assembly finished and in place, he’d had a couple of other minor upgrades. Including, Dusty was secretly glad to know, a sturdier and doubly redundant antenna. “Not gonna get lost again with that little lot in place,” Maru said, rolling down the access ramp with a self-satisfied grin. “Go on, go show off, kid, you know you want to.”

Oh, _how_ he wanted to. Dusty had to make an effort to keep the excitement out of his voice as he requested clearance from the tower, and even more of an effort to fly casual on the climb out, but once he was in clear airspace he let himself have some _fun_.

It hadn’t been so very long since he’d been in the air, but it felt like forever. The wind rushing past him, the indescribable exalted feeling that came with lift, with the moment when the world fell away beneath him and he was once more part of the air and the sky, filled his entire awareness. Being grounded was the worst thing ever, Dusty decided as he flung himself gleefully through the sky. Worse than losing. Worse than being lost. 

He didn’t even realize he was yelling in sheer excitement until Skipper got on the radio to suggest he consider turning down the volume, and even then the embarrassment couldn’t take away the simple pleasure of flight. He dove for his practice course, threading the silos so tightly he drew a swirl of straw behind him, knife-edging under the bridge and up again into the sky with a couple of imaginary Hornets racing him through the vertical loop of the half-Cuban Eight. He did roll after roll, enjoying the dizziness without letting it distract him, aware of the hard clean feeling of power and speed that came with pushing his throttle wide open. Dusty had never really appreciated that until the gearbox failure had limited him to eighty percent; having it back had been like a light turned on in a hangar he hadn’t realized was dark.

Up here, the nagging sense of his own insignificance was barely noticeable. Ever since he had looked up from that beach on Amelia’s island and seen the vast arch of their own galaxy overhead, seen its incomprehensible scale and understood how tiny he himself was in comparison, Dusty had been aware of a vague uncertainty undermining so many of the things he had thought were important--things he thought _mattered_. The light that met his eyes had left those stars centuries ago, millennia ago, long before the world he knew existed. In the face of that indescribable hugeness of space and time, all the things he wanted had seemed to be both brief and petty, pointless by comparison. Even life and death, even the simplification of everything into _the job to be done_ and the need to do it which he had come to understand in his time at Piston Peak, had receded behind a kind of vague numbness in Dusty’s mind--until now. 

Now he felt somehow reconnected to the world, as if the moment of takeoff had torn away some kind of insulating membrane. This was what he was for. This, this act of flight, defiance of gravity, this slipping of earth’s bonds _mattered_ , regardless of how fast he went, how high he flew. 

Dusty looked down at the perfect, miniature world a thousand feet below, and felt a wave of affection for the familiar green fields and rolling hills of home. 

He flew until he was pleasantly tired, and when he came in to land found that a little committee had gathered at the end of the taxiway to meet him. Chug and Sparky looked almost as excited as he felt; the forklift even did a tiny donut. 

“Wow, Dusty, you're looking great!” he said. Chug was grinning enormously.

“He looks better than great! Way to fly, Dustmeister!”

“Feelin’ better, kid?” Skipper asked, with a smile of his own. Dusty tried for a casual _no big deal_ expression, but couldn’t make it stick for very long. 

“I feel wonderful,” he said. “Thanks. Thanks, Maru, and Dottie, you guys are amazing.” 

“We know,” said Maru, clinking his can of oil with Dottie's. “But hey, if you felt the need to say it a few more times, I guess we could probably bear the strain.”

“Back on form and kicking Aston Martins,” Chug was saying. “And--hey, he’s trending.”

“I’m what?”

“We...kinda posted some video of you doing those moves just now,” said Sparky, with the grace to look somewhat sheepish. “Your YouTube channel’s really popular anyway, but...wow, looks like people are _super_ interested in Dusty Crophopper’s triumphant reappearance!”

“Guess that takes care of your publicity needs,” Skipper said drily. “Bet you’re gonna be getting a call from the folks in charge of the Gearhart tour. Might want to touch up your paintjob before the cameras arrive.”

“My paintjob,” Dusty repeated, and then “My paintjob! Dottie, please tell me you have some high-gloss white and orange left?”

~

Skipper wasn’t wrong. By nightfall a couple of news crews had already arrived, and the bars were packed with excited locals as well as visitors. Dusty’s de facto publicity department were kept busy making agreements with the event management team in charge of Amelia’s flight, and the arrival at half past eleven of a security detail added another layer of complexity to the situation. Neither Chug nor Sparky had the time to look closely at the comments or responses to any of the items on Dusty’s own media accounts or the spots filmed by the TV crews; the volume of comments was just too enormous for anyone to keep up with it. 

Nobody, therefore, paid any attention when the _Dusty Crophopper Returns!_ videos were reposted on a particular Rudderit subforum, accompanied by some pretty vicious commentary, or when the thread spawned by the post devolved into a discussion of Dusty’s various shortcomings and how it would have made more sense to leave him on the island; haters were going to hate no matter what, and in any case this particular subrudderit was known for its vitriol. Afterward it would be noted that the OP had been extremely careful not to make any specific reference to the planned itinerary for the rest of the Gearhart flight once Dusty rendezvoused with Amelia. Nothing that would ping the attention of the kind of people whose job it was to watch out for potential dangers to security. It would also be noted that two accounts initially thought to be sockpuppets of the OP had in fact been posting from two completely different IPs located in different countries, both thousands of miles away from the original poster’s location. 

It wasn’t until a little later that the pattern was traced back to its point of origin. But at the time, there weren’t any _real_ indications of a potential threat. 

Yet.


End file.
